


safe as houses

by sweetwatersong



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Clint Barton's Farm, Family, Other, Past Brainwashing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2019-02-16 22:26:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13063446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetwatersong/pseuds/sweetwatersong
Summary: There is a monster that lives under Natasha's skin and waits to be called back again. There is a family that loves her without question or reserve. There is a house that has become her home.There is a trigger.





	safe as houses

Natasha knows herself, knows there is a creature in her that could come to life at the right signal or the wrong moment. It could tear the life she's built at SHIELD apart, destroy her partnership with Clint Barton. It could shatter the fledgling trust too she is building with the woman he loves, and it is because Natasha finds herself falling in love with her as well that she tells Laura of this fear, as much as she is able. The comfort of this farmhouse, this place that has begun to feel like a home, makes the threat of her past lie quiet.

That scares her more than her monster.

"I don't have the luxury of ignorance," Natasha tells her on a summer's night, knowing the bitterness that lies beneath her breastbone will not make it to her words. "I can't pretend that there isn't a code in my mind, waiting, hidden until someone brings it to life. I have to walk every day with the knowledge that each step could change me into someone I stopped being a long time ago."

Laura leans forward, then checks herself before Natasha can move away. "Iron rusts," she says at last, gaze flicking down from the ceiling to meet Natasha's eyes. "Code breaks. Are you sure that all the years you've piled on top of your conditioning hasn't changed them, changed you? The weight of everything you've done, knowing you need to avoid becoming who they made you to be... are you so certain that hasn't buried it deep enough?"

Natasha exhales, silent. Then the corners of her mouth quirk with something she knows is too rueful to be a smile. There is a growing seed of warmth inside her chest, though, because Laura is not flinching, is not fleeing. "Let's hope I never have to find out."

She reaches out and Natasha lets her take her hands, lets her hold on. "Natasha? Even if you do, I'll be there."

"No." She fights back a surge of alarm and meets her eyes, the thought of that making her throat close. "No, Laura, I hope you're not."

Laura searches her face, understanding some of what crowds Natasha's heart with terror, and nods at last. "Okay."

-

They aren't so lucky. It's a Saturday afternoon in town, in a place that should be as safe as the farmhouse, when Natasha is distracted from Lila's commentary and Laura's amused rejoinders. Far off, just on the edge of her hearing, she catches the faint jingle of someone tossing change together. A handful of pennies, perhaps, drawn from a cup or taken from a cashier. But there is something off about it -

Lila tugs on her hand and Natasha refocuses, following the bracelet-bedecked hand pointing towards the playground.

"That's Rebecca," the five-year-old says with all the gravitas that such valuable information deserves. "She sits at my lunch table with me and eats my carrots, 'cause I gave her two gummy bears-"

The jingle comes again, rhythmic and teasingly familiar. Natasha attempts to suppress an vague sense of unease that steals over her at the sound. It's irrational. Why should she be so preoccupied with a simple noise like that?

She had been right. It's not loose change, dimes and quarters all clinking together; it's something else. It's almost like...

It's...

-

"Natasha?"

Concerned by the unfocused air on Natasha's face, Laura watches her lift her head with a inquiring look. When she meets her eyes, she wants to shiver. There has always been a keen awareness in Natasha's green eyes looking out at the world and assessing, weighing, judging for threats. Over the years Laura has watched time temper that wariness, beat the sharp edge into something she came to realize was trust. And yet the full brunt of that edge is here again. It's back, and it's watching for any sign that she's uncomfortable.

She forces her unconscious frown into a quizzical smile. "Are you with us?"

"Of course," Natasha replies smoothly, her careful grip on Lila's hand never faltering. Laura studies her for a moment longer before nodding.

"All right. Just wanted to make sure you didn't walk into traffic while your mind was elsewhere."

"Traffic? Around here?" Her sardonic air takes in the lack of moving vehicles or traffic lights anywhere along this stretch of Main Street. Laura smiles at her and turns to scan for Cooper, her eyes searching for a black bike helmet moving down the sidewalk.

"Watch for cars!" She calls, catching her son's wave of a hand, and buries her unease underneath as many layers as she can.

Their lives depend on it.

-

Her next steps are clear. She must get rid of the witnesses and establish contact with her handler; when and where he will be waiting is easy enough to discern from the patterns of her training. But the task at hand will be easy in so remote a house, so removed a place from neighbors. It will be simple.

When the Widow goes to follow the woman and older boy-child into the house, her knees give out by the front steps.

"Auntie Nat?" The girl-child asks, stopping by her side. She stares at the little one. Her body is refusing to follow her orders, her directives. How can this be? 

The girl-child is still looking at her anxiously, so soft and trusting and easily silenced. "Are you okay?"

The Widow reaches for words, for answers, and can find none as little hands touch her cheeks. They are soft against her skin, gentle and pampered because she knows they have never shed blood. Have never taken a life. But they are familiar and kind, they have sculpted mud pies and cradled plush toys and clapped against her own in games of Patty Cake, in glee and joy and excitement.

They have painted butterflies for her.

"Auntie Nat?"

The Widow meets Lila's eyes in silence for a long, breathless moment.

Then she sighs.

-

Under a plaid shirt and rolled up sleeves, under the Kevlar vest he's wearing to enter his own home, under the cage of ribs that has broken and healed and broken again countless times before, Clint's heart pounds with an anxiety that never crosses his face.

Laura's call said the Red Room's daughter was back. The thought of the lethal creature Russia made her alone in the house with his family - with her family - had driven him to reckless speed on the long flight from the SHIELD outpost, urgency in every moment. Each second that it took him to get home might have been a moment too long.

But he walks up the steps instead of running, his bow slung across one shoulder, his quiver bumping against his hip, because Laura has opened the door with and her look holds relief, not desperation. And he walks up the hallway stairs instead of pounding up them because she is taking her time, moving silently. He follows her when she walks past their bedroom and goes instead to Lila's room. When she steps aside he stands in the doorway and takes in the sight of the Black Widow, the ruthless killing machine from Russia's darkest chapters, the violent psychopath who earned her title and with it her blood-red hair.

She is curled up on cotton sheets covered in constellations, one arm tucked under her head, the other loose against her chest. Lila sleeps just as soundly sprawled across the free end of the pillow, one thumb stubbornly tucked into her mouth, and the fat plush ladybug that Auntie Nat gave her for her fourth birthday is firmly squashed between the two of them.

Clint came home to face a monster. He finds Natasha there instead.

He watches them sleep in the low light of Lila's desk lamp, breathing peacefully and evenly, and only lets down his killing edge when Natasha opens her eyes to meet his gaze levelly.

When what needs to be said in their silent way has been said, she closes her eyes and settles down to drift again in the shelter of protective stuffed animals and a four-year-old guardian angel. Only then does Clint leave to turn back down the hallway, quiver bumping against his hip, and bury his face against Laura's neck when she wraps her arms achingly tight around him.

-

"That was the signal," Natasha says as she pours another pancake's worth of batter onto the hot skillet. The task appears commands her whole attention and serves nicely to explain why she doesn't look up at Clint. "Two Russian coins and a bullet rattled together. Not a sound anyone could replicate accidentally."

"And that triggered it." 'It,' the assassin who sleeps like Death's lover under Natasha's skin. 'It,' the thing they all quietly expected she might transform into someday. 'It,' the reason that Natasha made him swear in his own blood to stop her should she lose herself before she agreed to join SHIELD.

'It,' the creature that broke under the gentle touch of his daughter's hands.

Clint can't decide if the relief is still making him dizzy or if it's the shaky ground that lies ahead of them and makes everything solid seem suddenly unreliable. They always planned for her to be triggered in the field, in the offices - anywhere but here.

Anywhere but _home_.

Natasha nods. After all, what words could she say?

Clint lets out his breath, the skin between his shoulder blades itching, and tries to think straight. "We have to move."

"Not yet." Natasha reaches behind her and Clint can't help the muscles that tense at the movement. From her shadowed, wry grin she doesn't miss the minute shift. But she continues, pulling out a passport and a phone from the small of her back casually enough, and tosses them one-handed onto the counter. "I have it on good authority that he was running radio silent up to the point that I found him. And whoever remembers my face, whoever still knows enough about the Red Room's tricks to know that one, they'll keep looking for that agent." Her smile is sharp and deadly. "They'll never find him."

Clint studies the items sitting on the counter Laura scrubs every morning, innocuous among the traces of sprinkle-coated cookies and smears of jam. The threats they represent are hard ones in the light of the morning sun: who they came from and who retrieved them.

"Why aren't you running?" Because frankly that's what he expects. That's what he always imagined Natasha would do if she came to and found the beginnings of her worst nightmares lying at her feet. She would flee across the country, across the globe, and even with SHIELD's resources he wouldn't be able to find her. Then again, even with SHIELD's resources, no one should have been able to find her _here._

Just like the bad guys to never play fair.

"This is my home." Natasha flips the pancake with the ease of practice. The sizzle of butter and batter sends another wave of delicious aromas wafting into the air. "They have already taken too much from me; my childhood house, my training center, my country. I've left everything I've ever known to escape their reach before. I'm not going to leave everything I love, too."

Laura emerges from the study. Her hair is piled into a lopsided, loose bun and a steaming mug of tea is cupped in her hands.

"I can't say how glad I am to hear you say that," she tells Natasha evenly, this eagle-eyed, swift-moving farm girl they both love. "If you thought we were going to let you leave, you would have had another thing coming."

For a moment Natasha's shoulders sag as she looks towards Laura, caving with the stress and exhaustion and guilt of what could have been. Clint knows, Clint understands, but Laura - Natasha never told Laura the fullest extent of who she had been, who she could become. Even though Laura must have pieced enough together to understand, that lapse seemed unimportant in the light of their assumption that the farm was safe. That here, in Laura's arms, under the apple boughs and among the waving fields of grass, they were shielded from the world.

It turns out that had been as false a hope as every other one they've had.

"Laura..."

She stops her with a hand on her cheek, turning Natasha's face so she can meet her eyes.

"You scared me yesterday. I don't want you to do it again." Not an order; not something that Natasha would have to choose to slip away from or obey. A reprimand light as her touch, intense as her gaze. A request.

The corner of Natasha's mouth lifts under her palm.

"Yes ma'am," she replies.

The pancakes are ready when their horde of small children descends, making more noise than two small bodies should reasonably be able to make. Lila heads straight for Natasha with her arms lifted and a chant of, "Auntie Nat! Auntie Nat!" Natasha scoops her up and holds her close, cradling her with a gentleness no monster of the Red Room would ever be capable of.

They still have questions. Did someone trace Natasha here? Who sent the messenger? What will they need to do next? But in the morning light, filled with maple syrup and black coffee and chocolate-chip pancakes for their children, Clint knows the answer to the only question that matters.

Natasha smiles when she catches him watching before bending her head to listen to Cooper rattle on instructions for proper butter-to-syrup ratios. On his right Laura's hand curls around his and squeezes.

All right. This is their home, and they're not going anywhere.


End file.
